As you will be aware Union members, working under the Offshore Contractors Association Agreement, rejected an offer from the OCA in a consultative ballot vote following which both Unite and GMB declared a formal Trades Dispute with the OCA.

In an attempt to avoid a Trades Dispute your union Workplace Reps, National and Regional Union Officers have held further negotiations over the past few weeks with senior officials of the OCA as per the dispute resolution procedure.

For your information and consideration, the letter from the OCA dated 8th February 2017 outlining their pay increase offer, is in the link

We have repeatedly pointed out to the OCA employers that we want all those working under the OCA agreement to receive a pay increase so that those who are on wages above the OCA minimum pay rates should get their OCA part of their salary uplifted by the % increases offered by the OCA.

Unfortunately, the OCA are saying that their mandate only covers the minimum rates of pay.

It would then be down to the individual OCA companies who pay in excess of the OCA rates to decide if they apply the % increase to the additional part of their employees’ salary or not.

We are now communicating this OCA offer to you because it’s the Unions members that decide if the pay increase offer is acceptable or unacceptable as it’s not for the Union Workplace Reps or Union officers to make that decision.

We would be grateful if you now gave careful consideration to the OCA pay increase offer as outlined in their letter and decide whether you find it is acceptable or not.

Postal ballots are not giving us the desired high percentage ballot returns we would like to get from our Unite members. It is, of course, vital that we reach out to all our members and they cast their votes accordingly. As ever, it is you the member who will determine the outcome of this ballot.

Please make sure that you exercise your digital vote no later than 12.00 noon on Monday 20th March 2017 and encourage your fellow Unite members to do likewise.

You will be receiving an email with your unique voting code and details how to vote very shortly. Please check your emails and junk/spam folders in case in goes there. If you do not receive the voting email contact the Unite office on 01224 645271.

We are still requiring an update from some Union members as to their personal details of job title and current work location so we are continuing to write or e-mail separately to those who we still need these details from.

So if you have received a letter or e – mail requesting this information then please respond as we do need it for legal purposes for a strike ballot.

This is because should the OCA pay offer be rejected then it’s more likely that we will be looking at sustained periods of strike action over the coming months and possibly throughout the summer should the return from an industrial action ballot give union members that legal mandate to strike.

Yours sincerely

Tommy Campbell & John Boland

Regional Officers

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Unite is the largest trade union for offshore workers in the North Sea UKCS